


Skinned by fire

by Black Hole Bullshit (orphan_account)



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-16
Updated: 2008-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-11 06:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Black%20Hole%20Bullshit





	Skinned by fire

When the sun blares down upon someone, it's like a draining force. Heat seemed to encourage unsolicited daydreams, to want to toy with a person. No matter what responsibilities a body had to take care of, the sun could just melt it all away, whether that was wanted or not. Being a man meant that you did the things you said you would do and your urgency went to your obligations. Unfortunately for men, they were not strong enough to defeat the sun and all its sly rays that seeped down from the sky and into the blood stream.  
  
The sweat that coiled around Dean's body from the roots of his black hair to in between his toes seemed to be draining out of him as water from a loosened spigot. Forgetting the fact that his white tank top was turning into an entrancingly transparent cover, his boots were highly uncomfortable. It felt like a sauna in his shoes, and it was that discomfort that finally woke him from his daydream.  
  
Pulling himself erect from the five-foot hay stack he had been leaning on, Dean closed his eyes as he shook his head to get any drips of sweat off of his head. How long he had been thinking, dreaming up that event he had not been there for, he didn't know. For a moment, he felt ashamed for having been so drawn into it. It was still near impossible to imagine, when he was just standing there, even if he had just played his made-up version in his head.  
  
Part of it was his fault, he knew. If only he had stopped her, even  _tried_  to stop her from hopping onto the bed of that Ford, he might have been able to stop it all from happening to her.  _They didn't even look right,_  he scolded himself. Perhaps she would have gone on anyway. In fact, he was ninety-nine percent sure of it, but that didn't make what he did, or didn't do, any better.  
  
Any and every way he turned it, which was pretty much every way possible, he had let his best friend go off with strangers. God help him if he must have lied every time he told himself that he loved her. If he really did, he wouldn't have just let her go, would he? He knew he did, at least to an extent. That was why he couldn't make sense of it.  
  
There was one factor that may have played a part in his decision. People always used to say that if you loved someone, you had to let them go. Did they really mean that, literally? Really, all he had done was let her leave without so much as a tiny hint of an opinion from her friend. Friends, he was sure, did not do that. In any case that he had been in, he would have wanted Josie to tell him what she thought. She didn't openly seek his advice. It didn't matter. It was his fault, and _their_  fault - those stupid bastards. If he ever saw a one of them, he'd punch them till they were unrecognizable.  
  
Realizing what time it was by the way the sun was looming the sky, Dean's expression turned from anger to guilty surprise. Throwing his leather work gloves to the dirt and hay mixture below his feet, he began running as if there was a fire out to catch his heels. Running like crazy definitely made it feel hotter outside than it really was, but it felt good to have the air blowing at him, and it was like a self-made air conditioner as his feet beat upon the pavement. A mile. Dean had a mile to run to get to Josie, and God was she going to be pissed at him for getting there late.  
  
When at last he arrived, sweat was literally pouring off of his beat-red face and he was to the point where his tank was so soaked that it couldn't even give home to his chemical-driven droplets.  
  
Chest heaving, he bent a little to his right, sticking out his elbow and holding his side as he attempted to catch his breath enough to apologize. Finally, though he felt his heart constricting to the point of pain, he forced himself to speak. "God Josie, I'm so sorry," and his apology started out about his tardiness, but it quickly blurred into the devastation she had encountered, "-About everything. God..." he repeated, feeling anguish build up inside of him. "Josie -" he attempted to speak, but then with crumbling steps, he moved toward her until he wrapped his arms around her stomach and hugged her as much as he knew she would allow him - on her best of days, which this wasn't, but when he pulled his head out from the crevasse of her shoulder and neck, he read her eyes and her face, and in seconds, he knew that she would let him.  
  
Falling back into his previous position, he gently lifted the hem, on the right side, of her red shirt, beneath her denim jacket. His blood was still pumping from running, so if possible, her skin actually felt cool against his hand. He hadn't picked the right side though. Replacing her right hem, he began to repeat his actions to the left side. There, he felt lifted skin, rough, broken, healing, and he sighed into her hair, pulling his hand back out and began gently caressing her upper back in circles. He didn't care if she was too damn tough for him to care.  
  
“You’re still beautiful, no matter what they did, you know that right?” he pulled his head back to look into her eyes. Her eyes were dark, cold, and she didn’t show any hurt within them. Josie was able to hold herself up incredibly well, better than he would have been able too, but they had broken her that night she got in the truck with those strangers. No one would have believed the rumors if the doctor hadn’t confirmed them. The bunch of bastards…  
  
Human beings weren’t supposed to have it in them to treat other humans that way anymore, not like animals, not to brand them as if they were cattle. Civil. Ha! Dean didn’t know what to think of humans anymore. He knew what to think of her though: She was tough, special, hurt, scared, in denial; she needed help, and he would be there when she was ready to ask for it. Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened to her, but it was abuse and torturous. Eventually her skin would heal, but he would have to wait for her walls to crumble down before she, Josie, could actually pull through.


End file.
